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What about the other kind of mining? The cost of running a mining rig is electricity and cooling. Solar panels for one and the vacuum of space for the other. Lo

What about the other kind of mining? The cost of running a mining rig is electricity and cooling. Solar panels for one and the vacuum of space for the other. Looks like the cost to launch a small satellite starts at $10,000 (or 1 bitcoin). The cost of the electricity required to mine 1 coin in the US is as low as $3224 (as of Dec. 2017). What would be the hash rate and lifetime to make a microsatellite a cheaper mining platform than terrestrially?

ben-schaaf 9y ago
Cooling in a vacuum is a lot more difficult than with an almost endless supply of cooler gas to run over your hardware. The ISS runs liquid ammonia cooling to large sets of radiators in order to keep the station and solar panels cool. I'd imagine you'd need a similar setup if you're putting your cubesats far enough out that they won't need active propulsion to stay in orbit, and if you're using similar consumer hardware.
soared 9y ago
I'd imagine the economics are similar to chinese miners who don't pay for electricity. New hardware comes out too quickly and improves too much for any viable longterm use of hardware. (I've seen this argument repeated a bunch on hn, I don't know if its true. I'm not into mining at all). But if it were up to me, I'd love to see mining in space. More stuff in space is cool!
amalcon 9y ago
The vacuum of space is actually a terrible heatsink, because it does not provide conduction or convection. Actually, even low-powered Earth-orbit satellites often have cooling problems. They need large heatsinks to radiate the heat from the sun.
pilsetnieks 9y ago
None. You can use solar panels for energy on Earth, and atmosphere is better for heat dissipation than the vacuum of space. That $10k cubesat (which, by the way, becomes much more costly once you add all the interesting stuff on it,) will have tiny solar panels, tiny heat radiators, and you cannot add much of a mining rig inside that 10x10x10cm frame. Not to mention that the orbit will decay in about 3-4 months.
mamon 9y ago
Aren't you off by at least one order of magnitude? According to this site[1]: http://spaceflight.com/schedule-pricing/#pricing http://spaceflight.com/schedule-pricing/#pricing launching a 5kg satelite costs 295 thousands USD (please note a fine print under the table, saying "pricing in thousands" ) Also, this is a price for low orbit, for geostationary orbit it's almost $1M. [1] Yes, we now have online pricing list for space flights :)

ben-schaaf 9y ago

Cooling in a vacuum is a lot more difficult than with an almost endless supply of cooler gas to run over your hardware. The ISS runs liquid ammonia cooling to large sets of radiators in order to keep the station and solar panels cool. I'd imagine you'd need a similar setup if you're putting your cubesats far enough out that they won't need active propulsion to stay in orbit, and if you're using similar consumer hardware.

soared 9y ago

I'd imagine the economics are similar to chinese miners who don't pay for electricity. New hardware comes out too quickly and improves too much for any viable longterm use of hardware. (I've seen this argument repeated a bunch on hn, I don't know if its true. I'm not into mining at all). But if it were up to me, I'd love to see mining in space. More stuff in space is cool!

amalcon 9y ago

The vacuum of space is actually a terrible heatsink, because it does not provide conduction or convection. Actually, even low-powered Earth-orbit satellites often have cooling problems. They need large heatsinks to radiate the heat from the sun.

pilsetnieks 9y ago

None. You can use solar panels for energy on Earth, and atmosphere is better for heat dissipation than the vacuum of space. That $10k cubesat (which, by the way, becomes much more costly once you add all the interesting stuff on it,) will have tiny solar panels, tiny heat radiators, and you cannot add much of a mining rig inside that 10x10x10cm frame. Not to mention that the orbit will decay in about 3-4 months.

mamon 9y ago

Aren't you off by at least one order of magnitude? According to this site[1]: http://spaceflight.com/schedule-pricing/#pricing http://spaceflight.com/schedule-pricing/#pricing launching a 5kg satelite costs 295 thousands USD (please note a fine print under the table, saying "pricing in thousands" ) Also, this is a price for low orbit, for geostationary orbit it's almost $1M. [1] Yes, we now have online pricing list for space flights :)